Sometimes the online world reveals unsuspected parallel dimensions. This is an unknown restyle of Neural independently (and secretly as we never knew about it) made by NY-based Motion and Graphic Designer, Clarke Blackham. Very nicely made, perhaps only a bit glossier for the magazine’s line, it testifies once more how even your most familiar outcomes can have another life somewhere else.

The value of craft after software sounds rampant sometimes, expressing the freedom of escaping repetitive taps and clicks to accomplish some assumed tasks. Mixing media, electricity, electronics, mechanics and inert objects Graham Dunning has realised a structured track/performance/open script in his “Mechanical Techno: Ghost in the Machine Music.” More than a proof of concept a machine music declination.

Isn’t ASCII Art a perfect form of “graffiti” in 2010s? The 8-bit aesthetics is among the strongest visual references connecting the analogue recent past with the omni-digital present, so why not adopt it to finally have some public art embedded in the present? In Varberg, Sweden, 2016, the GOTO80 crew (feat: Karin Andersson) did it, choosing (not by accident) the Mo Soul Amiga-font.

The relationship between Andy Warhol and personal computers (becoming quite popular during his last years) has been only partially investigated beyond his Amiga works. In November 2015, Sotheby’s sold his “Apple (from Ads)” (acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas) for 910.000 USD, and in catalogue’s notes Warhol tells about his meeting with Steve Jobs insisting to give him one and showing him how to draw (even if still in black and white): “we went into Sean [John Lennon’s son]’s bedroom–and there was a kid there setting up the Apple computer that Sean had gotten as a present, the Macintosh model. I said that once some man had been calling me a lot wanting to give me one, but that I’d never called him back or something, and then the kid looked up and said, ‘Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.’ And he looked so young, like a college guy. And he told me that he would still send me one now. And then he gave me a lesson on drawing with it. It only comes in black and white now, but they’ll make it soon in color…I felt so old and out of it with this young whiz guy right there who helped invent it.”

Minority Report comes closer… Three huge screens at Birmingham New Street railway station are scanning passers-by and play advertisements accordingly. http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/new-street-station-advertising-screens-9920400

Surveillance Camera Players interview

by Alessandro Ludovico

What about a worldwide surveillance cameras survey? Did you ever planned collaborative efforts like this?
We are already helping to create a web site to which people could post pictures and locations of surveillance cameras they have found in their hometowns. Though this site would be geared towards the United States (only), it is taking a lot of work to put together. It seems that aworld-wide camera survey would take even more work and even more time. But it would be a great and very valuable project. The use of video cameras to watch public space is taking place all over the world, usually without any commentary, discussion or documentation. We must do something to stop it.

Did you hear of the ‘SpyFinder’, a device that spots the presence of a surveillance camera? And, on the other end, what about the Indigo Systems’ ‘Omega’ and Irvine System Corporation’s ‘Cam-Noir’, minuscule cameras that can spot bodies in the dark, thanks to the heat we emit? Do you think it’s the beginning of a sort of cops and robbers play?
Yes, exactly. Two points: 1) we do not use any “spyfinder” or similar devices to locate surveillance cameras in New York, even though we have read all about them. We only use our “naked” eyes to locate cameras. The machines that spot surveillance cameras are very sophisticated, technical and expensive devices that would either be too costly for the average citizen or too complicated for the average citizen to understand, and we try to do everything at the level that an average or ordinary citizen could do and could understand; 2) “cops and robbers games” or even “arms races” (such as we saw between the USA and the Soviet Union) are an inevitable part of solutions that are merely or simply technological. To get out of the cycle of “cops and robbers” or “arms races,” we must abandon technological “solutions,” which are always superficial, and get down to the real sources of the problems, which are always human and social.

Do you ever thought of using an electronic device to disturb the signals transmission of one survaillance camera? And why?
No. Two reasons: 1) see our answers to the “spyfinder” question: we use no devices of any kind to avoid the cult of expertize and specialists; and we want to get out of the “cops and robbers” game, and using technology to disturb the cameras’ signals would only put us right into the heart of it; and 2) we try to avoid illegal activity of all kinds so that we aren’t ever confused with criminals, vandals or terrorists of any kind. There is a great deal of attention on the SCP by FBI, CIA, US military etc etc and we want to give them NOTHING to hang us with.

Not Bored is still in print? If so, how many issues are out in a year? Do you think a printed bullettin is tactical for this kind of hacktivism?
NOT BORED! still comes out in print form, yes. The last issue came out in late August 2001 and was dated September 2001. (It includes nothing about Sept 11 2001.) A new issue usually comes out ever year or so (irregularly). A new issue will probably come out in June or July 2002. I’m not sure that the SCP are “hacktivists,” because we *detourne* (not *hack*) surveillance cameras. Be that as it may: yes, a printed bulletin is (still) necessary, despite and even because of the Internet. There are some things on the NOT BORED! web site that have never been in the printed magazine, and vice versa, too. No theory or consistency here: just usefulness. You can’t send a web site to a prisoner in jail.

If you have a chance to pass a night as a survaillance guard, behind the monitor, what you’d like to do?
GREAT QUESTION!!!!!!!!!! I would take out all the old surveillance tapes (maybe even a few of my own), and then — mixing and splicing and scratching like a hip hop DJ musician — I’d program a special show for the camera-system.